‘LOVE and Basketball” is part of a welcome revolution in the way Hollywood depicts African-Americans, in that most of the film takes place in the upscale L.A. neighborhood of Baldwin Hills (known as the “black Beverly Hills”).

It’s also a movie that effectively conveys the excitement of basketball from a player’s point of view.

So it’s all the more unfortunate that it’s a mawkish, predictable, mechanically written love story peppered with the kind of stale, fake-sounding dialogue you only find in the cheesiest TV movies.

It’s a double shame because Sanaa Lathan is terrific in the lead role, and the cast includes major talents like Dennis Haysbert (once again playing a philandering husband) and the wonderful Alfre Woodard – here forced to play a crude feminist’s cartoon of an old-fashioned, stay-at-home mom.

The story is told in four uneven quarters.

It starts in 1981, when 12-year-old Monica and her parents move in next door to young Quincy and his folks, and he discovers that a girl can play ball just as well as a boy.

The next quarter finds the neighbors as high school seniors and stars of their respective basketball teams.

For Quincy (heavy-lidded Omar Epps), now a smooth campus stud, winning a scholarship to USC is a breeze – despite his short stature. Tomboyish Monica (Lathan) is equally talented, but her hotheaded behavior on the court doesn’t endear her to college recruiters.

Monica has long had a crush on Quincy, but he doesn’t notice her until the senior dance, when her mother (Woodard) and sister give her a makeover and put her into a dress.

Quincy and she get it together, and by the time both get to USC for the film’s third quarter, they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

At college, Monica becomes a top team-player under the tutelage of a tough coach.

But Quincy’s worldview is shaken when he discovers his father has been cheating on his mother. He’s explaining his crisis to Monica when she has to return to her dorm – if she violates the curfew set by her coach, she’ll be thrown off the team.

Quincy feels betrayed and breaks up with her. And writer-director Gina Prince-Blythewood treats this selfish response as if it’s perfectly sensible and sane.

The final quarter mainly deals with Monica’s lonely post-college exile playing women’s basketball in Europe, and her battle to win Quincy back upon her return to California.

For some reason, this otherwise feminist movie takes the amazingly reactionary position that it’s up to the woman to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to make a relationship work.

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LOVE AND BASKETBALL

A strong cast is defeated by a labored, screenplay in this overlong, clunky love story about a boy and a girl brought together, then driven apart, by their basketball ambitions. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated PG-13. At the Loews 84th Street, the Loews Village, the Sutton, others.